This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The contemporary divorce between faith and reason is not the result of a contest for power or for intellectual monopoly, but of a progressive estrangement without hostility or drama, and therefore all the more deadly.
The way of exoteric religion is to progressively replace egoism by submission to the will of God. Its four cardinal demands are faith, love, humility, and good deeds. In so far as they are complied with, they effectively bring a man towards Self-realization, even though he does not consciously envisage this. True, the Goal is not likely to be attained in this lifetime, but in God’s patience a lifetime is very little. Faith strengthens the intuitional conviction of the reality of God or the Self. Humility, its counterpart, weakens the belief in the ego and lessens the importance attached to it. Love strives to surrender the ego to God and its welfare to others. Good deeds deny egoism in practice and are alike the fruit and proof of love and humility.
Belief | Deeds | Ego | Faith | God | Good | Humility | Little | Love | Man | Patience | Practice | Reality | Religion | Self | Self-realization | Submission | Surrender | Will | Deeds | God |
Faith without reason leads to superstition: Reason without faith leads to cynicism.
Cynicism | Faith | Reason | Superstition |
What roots are to a tree, belief is to the soul. Great oak trees have great roots. Great souls have great faith. However, the faith that holds has spiritual qualities. The stable man has that intangible confidence in himself with capacities to be and to do, a recognition of God who may transform and empower his life, and a determined effort to realize man's highest ideals.
Belief | Confidence | Effort | Faith | God | Ideals | Life | Life | Man | Qualities | Soul | God |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
A great city whose image dwells on the memory of man is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; faith hovers over Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world-art.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
The faith of every man accords with his essential nature; man here is made up of faith; as a man’s faith is, so is he.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
A man consists of the faith that is in him. Whatever his faith is, he is.
When one has faith, then he thinks. One who lacks faith does not think.
Faith |
Faith is the very heroism and enterprise of intellect. Faith is not a passivity but a faculty. Faith is a power, the material of effect. Faith is a kind of winged intellect. The great workmen of history have been men who believed like giants.
The road to knowledge does not pass through faith. But only through the self-knowledge we gain by pursuing the fleeting light in the depth of our being do we reach the point where we can grasp what faith is.
Faith | Knowledge | Light | Self | Self-knowledge |
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
When we go beyond the ego and experience the sudden revelation that absolutely nothing is lacking, then immediately the faith is there to jump. The leap itself is the revelation, the revelation is the leap.
Ego | Experience | Faith | Nothing | Revelation |
[During dire days under the Nazis] Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he’s called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God – the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.
Action | Conscience | Faith | Freedom | God | Life | Life | Man | Principles | Question | Reason | Sacrifice | Virtue | Virtue | God |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
If you make an appointment with another, you are really assuming a trust; if you do not keep faith with him, you are stealing from him - not greenbacks out of his wallet, but filching time out of his bank - something that will be lost to him forever.
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
The whole world is created from Mind. How we perceive it is the whole story. If we see everything from our ego-centered view, everything is too much to handle. Always we feel limited, unable to cope with situations. We feel small, helpless, and out of control. If we go beyond the egoistic view of the self as separate, then we can enjoy a more magnanimous, panoramic perspective that we call Limitless Mind (dai shin), infinite capacity and complete faith in things just the way they are. It all depends on how we choose to view life. Dropping the ego-centered self we discover the real self, which is none other than no fixed self, completely open to each moment of life.
Capacity | Control | Ego | Faith | Life | Life | Mind | Self | Story | World |
There are six requisites in every happy marriage. The first is Faith and the remaining five are Confidence.
Confidence | Faith | Happy | Marriage |